'Crossing State Lines': 54 Writers, One American PoemThis year, National Poetry Month brings an ambitious collaboration: a cross-country relay race of 54 poets contributing to one piece of American poetry. The practice is known as renga, an ancient Japanese tradition of collaborative poetry, and Crossing State Lines is its American manifestation.

Carol Muske-Dukes has published seven books of poetry, including Sparrow, a finalist for the 2003 National Book Award.
Courtesy of Carol Muske-Dukes
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Carol Muske-Dukes has published seven books of poetry, including Sparrow, a finalist for the 2003 National Book Award.

Courtesy of Carol Muske-Dukes

This year, National Poetry Month brings an ambitious collaboration: a cross-country relay race of 54 poets contributing to one poem about America. The practice is known as renga, an ancient Japanese tradition of collaborative poetry in which one poet writes his or her lines then hands it off to the next.

The resulting poem, Crossing State Lines: An American Renga, was co-curated by California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes.

"To write 10 lines in less than two days ... doesn't sound like much," she says, "but if you're a poet, it's quite an assignment."

Muske-Dukes says the collaborative nature of the poem meant poets were in conversation with one another, reacting to what the previous one had written. So when poet Micheal Ryan of the University of California writes, "How many poets does it take to change a light bulb? ... How many poets does it take to change a country? How many presidents? How much pain?" the next poet, Brenda Hillman of California's Saint Mary's College, responds with this:

And so it goes throughout the American renga: Poets touch down, zigzag and take two steps forward then one step back. But every one of them takes up the challenge poet Robert Pinksy lays out in the first lines:

Beginning of October, mapleskindle in the East, linkedto fire season in the West by what?

Lt. Col. Edward Ledford plans to attend law school at the University of Virginia after retiring from 24 years in the Army.
Courtesy of Ed Ledford
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Lt. Col. Edward Ledford plans to attend law school at the University of Virginia after retiring from 24 years in the Army.

Courtesy of Ed Ledford

For some, the answer is in nature, bird song and ascendant notes. Others speak of love and every love driving toward a more perfect union.

And still others speak of war. A poem by Edward Ledford, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, appears toward the end of the renga. Ledford experienced the Sept. 11 attack at the Pentagon and tells Montagne what he found in the building's ruins.

"Right where the Pentagon had sheared off, on about the third floor, is a dictionary on a pedestal still open and apparently untouched," Ledford says. "And I always thought that had a lot of symbolism."

San Francisco native Robert Hass was named U.S. poet laureate in 1995.
Margaretta Mitchell
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Margaretta Mitchell

San Francisco native Robert Hass was named U.S. poet laureate in 1995.

Margaretta Mitchell

"It's so dark, that poem, it's remarkable," Robert Hass, who wrote the renga's ending, says of Ledford's contribution.

Hass is a former U.S. poet laureate, and his poem reacts to Ledford's words while giving a nod to Pinsky's opening — he was writing in April, six months after the project's October start.

"I didn't know I was coming at the end," Hass says, "but I [knew] that Robert [Pinksy's] poem had maples in it, falling, and the Buddhist phrase that's used to describe the renga ... is, 'Swirling petals, falling leaves. The autumn is the same thing as spring. The seasons keep changing.' So Robert's autumn gave me the spring, which it was when I was writing these lines."